I want to see my new business take off. One person is holding me back.

Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Good Job,

A colleague and I launched a new company after our previous employer closed. We divided responsibilities so she handled manufacturing and distribution while I managed digital content and marketing. My side of the business grew steadily. But within six months, her operational area began to falter. I began to step in to keep physical projects moving, and key infrastructure on her side wasn’t maintained. Despite having access to shared digital project management tools, she frequently framed it as a communication problem.

I attempted weekly check‑ins, but they rarely happened consistently and often devolved into venting rather than planning. Because our roles are so separate, meetings lack purpose beyond basic updates. Late last year, she asked to take over digital content management, leaving me with only marketing. Although I initially resisted—since I’d be giving up tasks I enjoy and that part of the business was functioning well—I eventually agreed. Since then, digital projects have slowed dramatically, leaving me with little marketing work.

I’ve adapted repeatedly to her needs and tried to improve communication, yet she still feels overshadowed and left behind. I enjoy the job I do for the clients, but I don’t have the bandwidth for hand-holding or supervising her side of things as well. I ultimately want to see this company grow and do well, and that requires both halves to work better. Is there a new way of approaching this that will get us back on track?

—Carrying the Ball

Dear Carrying the Ball,

Congratulations on starting a new company, which must be exhilarating but stressful for both you and your co-founder. Do you have a sense of why your colleague is falling behind? Is it a lack of knowledge, distraction, failure to follow through, or lax work habits? Some of these problems are more fixable than others, and figuring out where she’s getting snagged might help you prioritize whatever fixes you suggest.

Your co-founder sounds pretty defensive in meetings, but the first step is another conversation. Ask her to meet with you to review the company’s performance so far and strategize about the coming year. Set up a shared document with an agenda so you can both prepare for the meeting. First, talk about what has gone well (including her successes) and then turn to how you could grow or improve the business. If you have data, ideally in graphic form, show her the slowdown in digital projects you’ve observed. Present it not as a “gotcha” document, but as a problem to solve together. Do the same for other parts of the business that are lagging. Ask her how she thinks you, together, can improve performance. Brainstorm about ways to fix it. It’s slower to brainstorm than to just jump in and fix something, but it gives her a chance to contribute and to recognize when something needs to change. If she starts venting, give her a minute and then ask to move to the next item on the agenda.

You won’t solve everything with a Big Picture meeting, but the process should remind her of the stakes and goals of your company. In the strategy meeting or a follow-up, you could suggest revisiting your roles again to make sure you’re dividing your labor efficiently. She set a precedent by asking to take over digital projects, so you can say that you’re still in the experimentation phase of the new company and would like to officially take on another division, or hire someone else to do so if you can swing it.

If your co-founder rejects your ideas and doesn’t have good ones of her own, try to find the funds to bring in a consultant. Look for one who specializes in your line of business and has some experience in relationship mediation. The consultant has probably seen plenty of stalemates like this before. They can suggest ways to professionalize the business that might not be obvious to two new founders. Plus, your co-founder might pay more attention to an outside expert’s analysis of how to run the company. If the problems worsen, talk to a lawyer about what it would take to buy out your colleague or replace her with a different partner.

Dear Good Job,

I have really enjoyed my latchkey job supervising kids after school. But things are changing, and not for the better. Our school administration staff, who have never shown much interest in us, took over and are now telling us who’s going to do what, without assessing our strengths or doing performance reviews.

It seems like we’re a collection of individuals now, not a team. Before, if someone forgot a task and someone else covered it, they’d say, “Oh, thank you!” Now it’s, “Don’t do my job for me.” Our supervisor no longer welcomes offers to help her with stuff on our downtime—she now says it’s “just someone else telling me I can’t do my job.” Clearly, she’s frustrated, too, and is lashing out. I wanted to stay here until retirement, but this isn’t the place I once loved. I know I won’t be happy here anymore if things don’t change back, but I’d feel guilty leaving my supervisor; she’s been good to me. Please help.

—Sad and Frustrated

Dear Sad and Frustrated,

I’m sorry your once-friendly workplace has turned bitter and suspicious. The administration staff undermined your team by limiting your ability to make decisions about how to do your job. That’s a terrible thing to do for morale and even for workers’ mental and physical health. Long-term studies show that unfairness, unpredictability, or a lack of control at work risk making people sick. And unfortunately, as you’re seeing, frustration with this new situation is contagious. You might not be able to fix it, but you can try.

You say your supervisor has been good to you. She’s not being great right now, and it’s generous of you to recognize that her frustration is situational. But snapping at people she has power over means she is kicking down, and people should never kick down at work (or life). Since you have a strong enough relationship that you don’t want to leave, talk to her. Set up a meeting so you know you’ll have her attention. Tell her you’ve noticed the work environment changed when the administration started imposing its decisions on your group. She knows this already, but it helps to articulate and acknowledge what’s wrong. Then say you’d like to help solve the problem. As a supervisor, she should stick up for her team and negotiate with the administration. She may have tried to do this already and failed to get any concessions, or she might have felt powerless to try. In either case, offer to talk through ideas and encourage her to use what power she has to help her staff.

The people in administration probably imposed the new requirements without understanding how demoralizing they were. They may have thought they’d been neglecting your division and needed to do something. It’s possible they’re responding to a district-wide push for standardization or new performance-evaluation software. The point is, it was inconsiderate but probably not malicious, which means you (or your supervisor) can talk to them. You might be able to tweak the existing system by suggesting different assignments that reflect your team’s strengths and interests. If the new assignments include a list of expectations, see if you can add some language like “collaborate to fulfill needs” or “flexibly respond to daily tasks,” to promote and reward the cooperative spirit your team used to have.

It’s hard to undo administration decisions, but it’s possible to replace bad systems with better ones. Your supervisor could go to the administration with a new plan for dividing the labor and reporting on the team’s performance. With your help, she could suggest ways to assess the strength and needs of the latchkey program that will resonate with the administration’s need to administer (or be seen as administering). Your supervisor could present these ideas as an opportunity to reinvigorate the latchkey program by restructuring or refreshing it—something the administration could take credit for, which should appeal to them. The trick is to say not that “your changes are horrible” but rather, “here are some fresh ideas that build on your changes and will make the workplace even more successful” (while not grimacing).

If the administration is too rigid to change the assignment system they’ve imposed, you might be able to help your supervisor and the rest of your team think of it differently. Ask for a team meeting, take a deep breath, and share some of the observations you put in your letter. Some of them might be feeling a lot of the same frustrations. Say that work has gotten more stressful since the administration big-footed you, and that you miss how cooperative everybody was before. Say the administration staff was probably not trying to make you miserable, but even if they were, you shouldn’t let them. Tell your co-workers that you respect them and think they’re doing great jobs, and you’d hate to leave. If you’re allowed to bring snacks to work, bring cookies to lighten the heavy conversation. Good luck. Your colleagues and the kids are lucky to have someone like you who wants a friendly workplace.

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Dear Good Job,

My husband has worked for the same company since we graduated from college about 20 years ago (a start-up tech firm). For a long time, he did approximately three jobs for them. It was too much, and he burnt out. He could never catch up. It was impossible.

Finally, they agreed to restructure, but they’re asking him to write his own job description. How does one do this? He’s totally stuck. He’s been pointing out things that need to get done for years and has been told they don’t have the resources. Is this irregular as it sounds? Is this a lost cause?

—Isn’t This Management’s Job?

Dear Management’s Job,

You’re absolutely right, it is management’s job. But the fact that they don’t know how to do this job is an opportunity for your husband. It’s also an acknowledgement that his bosses don’t really understand what he does. It’s pretty common for leadership to fail to focus on extremely competent and efficient people. They’ve been getting three full-time employees’ worth of work out of this one guy, so it’s a big achievement that he’s finally getting them to restructure. Asking him to write his own job description recognizes that he has the expertise to do so … and admits that nobody else does.

First, let’s talk logistics. Job descriptions are weird documents. He could ask human resources for sample job descriptions to help him figure out the level of detail, format, and structure the company typically needs. He shouldn’t get too hung up on perfecting it, because it’ll probably have to go through multiple rounds of approvals and revisions (his boss, boss’s boss, human resources, finance, etc.).

In some organizations, job descriptions wield a lot of power, and your husband can use this one to force solutions he’s been pushing for years. It’s also a way to document all the things he’s done to fix or prevent problems without recognition because the problems got fixed or solved. This is the time to decide what he wants to keep doing and what he wants to stop doing. He should bullet-point his most important (and favorite) work responsibilities. He should assume that some or most people reading the document will not understand what he does and therefore should explain it in depth. At the same time, he should intentionally exclude tasks that he would like to pass along to new hires. To make it explicit, he could take responsibility for training these new hires in the enumerated tasks that he will no longer perform. Once he gets the hang of his own job description, he could offer to write job descriptions for additional staff he thinks the organization needs to hire.

—Laura

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